The holiday season brings many people joy for obvious reasons. Families get together, kids get to experience possibly the most innocent and joyous time, Christmas morning with Santa. For others, however, it can bring some stressful situations.

If you’re anything like my household you’re probably getting more online purchases from Amazon that you can hold. There’s a comical number of boxes both open and sealed waiting for their time to be wrapped and placed under the tree, resembling nothing short of a home from Who-ville. My house has been lucky not to have run into any scams or fraudulent actions. While damaging actions aren’t always 100% avoidable there are still a few measures you can take.

• The obvious first one is to make sure you purchase your gifts from reputable sites. One of the easiest ways to ensure you’re using a safe site (not just for purchases but this can be applied to any website) is to make certain there’s a padlock in the web address bar.
  
  
• Be on the lookout for a “privacy policy.” Reputable sites will have a link to their policy about how they will gather and use your information.
  
  
• Find their return policy. If you’re thinking about how great of a deal you’re getting, you should also be thinking “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Start looking for a return policy on their site. If there’s no indication that you can send something back, you may not be getting anything to begin with.

The last thing that may be more reactive but is still a good practice all year round is to keep a close eye on your bank account and spending. If you begin to notice there are unusual charges being racked up there’s a great chance your information has already been compromised.